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COVID Kidnapped My Smell and Taste

Mary Keating
2 min readOct 27, 2023

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Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash*

Just two days ago, I lost my sense of smell. I can’t taste either. Nothing. It never occurred to me how important those two senses were, until they were disabled.

After years of escaping COVID, it finally caught me. Knocked me out. I’ve been in bed for almost a week. Have had a fever for six days. Almost glad I can’t smell, because I’m too feeble to take a shower.

My husband is too kind to tell me if I stink and since he’s keeping his distance…

The first COVID test I took was negative. My doctor told me to take another one a few days later.

The line that appears to indicate infection was almost instantaneous. No need to wait 15 minutes to confirm what my body already knew.

My sisters warned me of the metallic taste of Paxlovid. But with no tastebuds registering to my brain, that wasn’t a concern. It could have tasted like anything, and I’d have no idea.

The inability to smell began to worry me. With no odors to detect or tastes to reject, how would I know if I ate something that had gone bad? I couldn’t. I could be happily munching away on too old meat or moldy fruit. Not that I was, but the idea I could be without even knowing it, scared me. Really frightened me.

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Mary Keating
Mary Keating

Written by Mary Keating

Author of "Recalibrating Gravity" a memoir in verse written to give hope to those who need it and to encourage disabled people to live their best lives.

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